


the skies over London

by Sarah T (SarahT), SarahT



Category: Der Himmel über Berlin | Wings of Desire (1987), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Wings of Desire - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 07:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16471583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/Sarah%20T, https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarahT/pseuds/SarahT
Summary: "I know what you want, and you know what I want--Information.  Information."





	the skies over London

**Author's Note:**

> A little something supernatural for Halloween. This is a fusion with Wim Wenders's classic 1987 film "Wings of Desire." Hopefully, even readers who haven't seen the film should be able to follow it. But you should see the movie anyway.
> 
> I've put a pairing tag on it, but this story would be a very good illustration of the reasons I find pairing tags unnecessarily overdetermining.
> 
> Thanks to Spike for a quick beta and Anarfea for encouragement.

“Moonrise, 7:10 pm.Moonset, 9:24 am.”Tucking the little notebook back into his coat pocket, Mycroft crossed to the figure seated perilously at the edge of the roof.“There was an inch and a quarter of rain this morning.”

“Bad joke, Mycroft,” Sherlock muttered sourly.

He didn’t look away from the city spread out beneath them, older, organic eccentricities of grey and white now in the shadow of willful insolences of misshapen glass.Spire and wheel and bridge, like the attributes of saints.Shard and gherkin and cheese-grater, like man’s folly given solid form.They had all been their perches, at one time or another.Now, the two of them were more limited in their choices.

“Not as bad as coming up here.”They weren’t, after all, _recording_ any more.“What do you imagine you’ll see?”

Sherlock continued to gaze.“I don’t know.London.”

“We saw London,” Mycroft reminded him.“We saw it when the woolly mammoths swam in the river, before the river had a name.We saw it when it was an army camp bristling with spears and helmets.We saw it burning, twice.We saw everything and everyone.”He blinked out at the city himself, remembering.“You’re the one who wanted a closer look.”

“You jumped, too.”

“I did _not_ jump,” Mycroft said, distinctly, folding his arms.“I was pulled down.”

At that, Sherlock looked up at him, eyebrows knitted, then away again.“I thought I wouldn’t mind not knowing.”

“As I recall, you were convinced you’d know _more_.”Mycroft knew the the maddening sense of incompletion, as if one were listening to an eternal unresolved chord progression.It had driven his earthly career as much as it had Sherlock’s.Even if his network of closed-circuit cameras was nothing but a mockery of the beatific vision of the city.

It was natural for him to feel that way.But Sherlock—Sherlock who had chosen this?

 _I want to bound up stairs and hear them creak beneath me, Mycroft_.

_I want to feel the wind blowing through my coat._

_I want to stretch out on a sofa in my dressing gown and wiggle my toes._

He’d said nothing about chasing the fugitive warmth of the poppy, the hollow exaltation of cocaine.Or sitting on the edge of a rooftop.

Before Mycroft’s world had changed, he’d held miserable shivering addicts on filthy mattresses in squats, soothing their pain just a little.He’d knelt next to would-be jumpers just like this, heard their thoughts, and infused them with comfort.An impersonal conduit of a universal compassion.

But that was before he’d had a body.This form conducted nothing.Or he didn’t understand how to make it do so.

“I did.”

“Are you going to admit you were wrong?That _would_ be unprecedented.”

Sherlock scowled.“It would be once more than you have.” 

Mycroft ceded the point with the arch of an eyebrow he thought Sherlock could probably feel even from behind him. 

They remained where they were.The wind picked up a little.Mycroft wondered if it would rain.He wondered if he should touch Sherlock’s shoulder anyway.

But then Sherlock looked up.“I wasn’t wrong, exactly.It’s just so much harder than I thought it would be.Even when I solve their mysteries, there’s always something that eludes me.Don’t you feel it?”

“Of course.”

“But it doesn’t bother you.”He shook his head.“I don’t think I even know _you_.”

“There isn’t so very much to know.”He found it baffling, the millions of individual decisions he had to make on a daily basis.The self he had to constitute out of _something_ for the world to see.Sometimes, things felt right.The suit.The umbrella.The pocket-watch. But for the most part…

“You don’t feel anything, do you?”

There was a strain of bitterness in Sherlock’s voice that he didn’t quite understand.

Mycroft laughed shortly.Blood along his scraped palms, bones jarred from impact, the tumult of color pressing in everywhere.“I assure you, more than I want to.”

“Really.”Sherlock looked as if he’d just said something provoking.He leaped to his feet in a heart-stopping display of dexterity and turned to face him, heedless of the edge of the roof only an inch from his foot.“What do you feel about me?”

“About you?”

“You shadow me as if I were one of your old charges, Mycroft.”

“I watch over all of England,” he pointed out.

Sherlock ignored him.“But I’m not.I never was.You’re not even one of the Host anymore—something which you persist in blaming me for.Yet here you are.Why?”

His eyes gleamed.Mycroft often wondered how no one noticed their quicksilver coloring.Their kind could never know if they were beautiful or not.But shouldn’t humans?“You’re my last connection to the glorious company, I suppose.”

“Nostalgia?” Sherlock said softly.“What do you feel about _this_?”

The kiss was startling, dry and soft on his mouth.Feather-light, but with an infinite pressure behind it.It was as if Sherlock had stolen his breath.He laid his hand gently on his shoulder and pushed him back.Away.Conducting nothing.Air returned to him, enough for speech.“Nostalgia.”

“Before, we could never have—“

They had not been separate from love.They did not know the nature of it.Mycroft, at least, still didn’t.

“You’re among humans now, Sherlock.Find a human.That’s what you wanted.”

Sherlock’s expression closed off.“And _you_ , of course, didn’t want anything.”

He shrugged.“I didn’t jump.”

“So you keep saying.”Sherlock dropped himself carelessly to the edge of the roof again.

Mycroft watched him for a while.He had gone so still he could have been one of the gargoyles they had favored as observation posts. Grey light seemingly suspended around his face, the hint of softness curving beneath the far-spaced eyes, the scarf wrapped close around a long pale throat in a gesture Mycroft remembered exactly.Sherlock liked that scarf; he wore it always now in the cooler months.Mycroft could count every fleck of tweed on his coat, catalog every irregularity in the pattern of his curls.And he did.Time contracted, became a single point, and yet there was still the effortless glide forward he remembered.Almost like eternity.

Almost.

He shook himself.This happened sometimes, falling into observation for so long he wasn’t sure how much time had passed when it was over.It disconcerted his colleagues.Sherlock, at least, was still there, as if Mycroft’s gaze had held him.He didn’t think he’d jump again.Not this time.

His phone buzzed.He had work to do.Other work.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, turning away.“Do be careful.After all”—he paused, remembering the bright red, the blossoming pain—“we were only given the grace to survive one fall.”

 

 

 


End file.
